Top AT&T executives rejected a proposal earlier this year from the company’s marketing organization to expand the carrier’s LTE footprint beyond its current goal of covering 80 percent of the U.S. population by the end of 2013. AT&T disclosed that in an FCC filing on a recent meeting with key agency staff. The company promised in March to expand its LTE offerings to cover 97 percent of Americans if its buy of T-Mobile is approved. The filing explains in some detail why the company concluded it couldn’t justify the cost of this aggressive rollout without the T-Mobile buy. The filing pegs the cost at $3.8 billion.

Two popular cable channels with lots of live shows are exempt from needing to orally describe action scenes with little dialogue on multichannel video programming distributors, under a draft Media Bureau order implementing video description legislation. FCC and industry officials said Thursday the bureau wants the order voted on later this month, so the rules can take effect soon as required by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. MVPDs and their associations as well as advocates for the disabled have been visiting the commission to lobby on the item, officials said and filings in docket 11-43 show (http://xrl.us/bk8c2o).

PHILADELPHIA -- Seattle Chief Technology Office Bill Schrier warned Wednesday at the Association for Public-Safety Communication Official’s meeting that all seven of the jurisdictions that received Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grants to build out early public safety networks in the 700 MHz band may be hard pressed to do so in the two years they have left under BTOP rules. Meanwhile, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski closed the conference with a speech promising the agency would move forward on an ambitious program of improving 911 communications.

Major telcos like AT&T and Verizon aren’t seeing a major impact from the nation’s economic trouble, despite the recent stock market swoon and U.S. credit downgrade, executives said. Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo weighed in at the Oppenheimer investor conference in Boston Wednesday on the ongoing union workers strike, emphasizing the need to change the company’s cost structure to remain competitive.

Three Commerce Committee members will be on Congress’s joint select committee on deficit reduction. Late Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he appointed Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass. On Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, selected House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., chose Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. The lawmakers’ presence on the committee may increase the chances that spectrum is part of final legislation, lobbyists and industry analysts said.

Another program access complaint may make its way to the FCC. Hawaii’s biggest telco has threatened one against that state’s largest cable operator. And the commission may finish work soon on two other program carriage complaints made by AT&T and Verizon against Cablevision and its former programming unit.

PHILADELPHIA -- FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett said he remains ‘hopeful and positive’ about the prospects Congress will approve legislation authorizing the FCC to conduct voluntary incentive auctions and dedicating funds to a national wireless broadband network for public safety. Barnett made a special appearance at an Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials general business meeting.

The FCC adopted an order that the commission said will help peel back several previous rules and allow fixed microwave operation in the spectrum bands that had been previously restricted. License holders will also be able to use adaptive modulation, “which will allow them to take advantage of the latest technology to maintain the reliability of links,” the FCC said. The FCC also eliminated the so-called “final link” rule, saying Tuesday’s rules would give broadcasters “flexibility” by letting them use fixed microwave links more frequently. The commission also launched a rulemaking seeking comment on ways to make microwave communications “more flexible and cost-effective."

The FCC’s decision won’t be political on whether LightSquared poses an interference threat to GPS systems, Chairman Julius Genachowski said at a news conference after Tuesday’s open meeting. The agency is looking for an answer that will let both GPS and LightSquared thrive, and isn’t taking sides, agency officials said later at a briefing for reporters. The commission hasn’t decided whether more testing will be needed, and it isn’t setting a deadline to make a decision, the officials said. “There’s no timetable” for making a decision “other than we're trying to work as quickly as we can,” said Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan. At the officials’ briefing, held at FCC headquarters, the staffers spoke on the condition they not be identified by name and only would have agreed-upon comments attributed to them.

The FCC’s coordinated treatment of AT&T’s proposed purchase of Qualcomm spectrum and T-Mobile USA doesn’t necessarily indicate the later deal is in trouble, analysts told us. The commission will review both purchases in a “coordinated manner” and suspended its informal 180-day clock of its review of AT&T’s $1.9 billion offer for Qualcomm’s 700 MHz spectrum. That’s according to an FCC letter to AT&T and Qualcomm late Monday.